Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/64

 became more light-hearted, more suavely consolatory.

"But it's so deucedly mysterious—sending all kinds of messages for all kinds of people," he argued.

"What's so mysterious about it?" the man at the table demanded. "I think it s confoundedly simple."

"The machinery is, I suppose, when you understand it; but I mean the mixing up in the big events, the getting next to life with the shell off."

"Oh, it's mostly weather reports and 'sweetheart' messages and captains giving distances and saying they're coming into port or passing lights or wanting wharf room, if it isn't the Navy people asking for Sunday papers and news from home."

But think what a swath you could cut with wireless if you wanted to," pursued the other in his placid disregard of all side issues.

"Me?" said McKinnon, turning slowly about.

"I mean as a side line," interposed the stranger with a shrug. Still again McKinnon's nervous grey eyes swept the figure in the steamer-chair.

"But I have a side line," explained the operator as he noted the other man's puzzled gaze resting on his box of models.